Anyone's dc achieved top grades at GCSE with just textbooks and workbooks?

You mean alongside the teaching in a school right?

Yes, both mine did very well with no tutoring and not much input from me tbh.

@rrhuth I'm intrigued by an analogue house and probably a bit jealous. All homework is set on Google classroom, most subjects (maths, French, PE, science) homework is completely online. As I'm typing this I'm getting the Google classroom updates on the work due in today, a reminder than one or two pieces are overdue (uploading the art portfolio to the.slides document always seems to stall towards the end....) The school is very good with fact files and providing revision resources but all are online and there are no text books (I even asked but that's not the way the teachers teach) - it's a pick and mix download of sheets.

I'm going to start a list of the web sites with past papers and hopefully print some out....

Yes, we have a pretty analogue house and all has been good.

Plus there is research showing people absorb more from a physical book thanfrom reading on screen.

It is the effort put in that makes the difference, and how they revise.

Every child is different and different methods work better for some than others. It’s more important to find the way that sticks rather than do it because it works for others.
Ds is dyslexic with memory processing issues and flash cards and note rewriting are useless for him. 7’s and 8’s achieved but all through repetitive use of what he’d learned. Verbally re-explaining, playing with topics and making links across topics, applying knowledge in questions in different ways, just finding ways to embed the information so he had different ways to recall it. Exam technique also critical, so lots of topic questions and past papers.

My daughter pretty much did this: textbook questions, past paper questions and wrote her own notes 7 A* and 3 A.

I always found flash card construction, mindmaps a waste of time for my children. One was a high performer, and one wasn’t. I trawled the internet for topical exam qns for their subjects boards. They attempted those and got 8/9s and GCSEs. Practice topical past qns - that’s my suggestion.

Dd likes to make flash cards as it is an ‘active’ revision process.
Ds favoured past papers as a revision method. He found that similar questions regularly appeared and also had a good understanding of how marks were allocated eg often marks available for stating (what he regarded) as the obvious.

Mine did just textbooks and lesson notes, I did try to get her interested in flash cards and mind maps but she was having none of it. All 8s and 9s.

Mine did do some notes on little cards but the vast majority of his revision for both gcse and A level was past papers, he had massive piles of them and would do them repeatedly on rotation until he was getting 100%. It worked well for him but as PP have said, they are all different.

In addition to textbooks and workbooks, there are lots of things available either free or as part of what you pay for when you get a TV licence (Iplayer) or Amazon Prime/Netflix etc. For example DS1 has Macbeth and An Inspector Calls on his GCSE syllabus, and plays were written to be watched as well as read. I didn't do English Lit and O level but I did at A level and I listened to the Shakespeare plays repeatedly on tape. Now, I could get hold of the novel too in audio, and hopefully some film or spoken word version of the Arthur Miller plays, not sure about the 3 poetry texts but there must be something.

I'm sure there's also loads of material for other subjects. It's just finding the good bits.

I'm amazed at schools that have text books..... Here's it's just power point presentations, notes in books and the occasional A4 sheet.

Well I can tell you that dc2 never did any flash cards at all.
Not even sure about notes. He seems more comfortable just doing passed papers.

He did get top grades (mostly 8 and 9 bar English litterature…..)

DD1 just used the school textbook. Her lowest grade was a B.

DD2 used some flash cards for Physics because she found it tough, standard resources for everything else. Her lowest grade was a 6.

They both attended the groups the school laid on outside of school hours, but not during the holidays and in a very targeted way - DD2 focused on maths, which she found hard (it earned her a solid 7) and DD1 targeted nailing English, which she wanted at A level, and got 8/8.

So it can be done without extraordinary measures.

For math, there is a lot which you can do.

Corbettmaths have lots of five a day questions for all abilities and ages, I recommend you start there. Also you can order a few different cheap math workbooks off Amazon etc to use as part of your revision.
Math Genie have a lot of grade specific papers that you can print out and do at home. You can adapt questions from some old past papers too. Resourceholic is another good source of information and advice, it is a blog about math worth looking at. Oral timed quizzes are also a brilliant way in order to retain the information taught at school.

For some, the act of writing and making flashcards is what fixes it in their minds. Otherwise there could be a disconnect between what they have seen on a screen or page compared to what they need to write.

I usually forget to pick up my shopping list - but I remember what's on it. DP needs a written list in front of him. On his phone, he'll just overlook half of it because he's focused on his phone and not the giant shelves teeming with boxes of teabags in front of him.

For gcse, I would study the chapters and find topical qns from revision papers.

In relation to past papers, most subjects have 2 sets of specimen papers and for non eng/maths there are the 2018 and 2019 papers. If you look hard enough the 2020 papers are somewhere on the internet.

Next year the autumn 2021 papers will be available

Practise of past papers, getting used to the layout of the papers, the timing of the papers, the timing allocated to each "mark", the type of questions asked is one of the best methods to achieve higher grades at gcse level (and A level). School will usually set these as they progress through their gcse courses and use questions from papers for homework and mocks. (or write their own similar questions).

However attempting a whole paper within the set time limit is always a good way to ensure that they can write to the correct level within the time limits for the paper. Mark schemes are also available so that they can check they are on the right track.

You could see if you can hire a tutor. Mind maps and flashcards work well too.

Mine did nothing and got 7s, 8s and 9s and one six. She was always very engaged in class, she just struggled to do anything alone (AD(H)D probably). Didn't work for A levels though, which she dropped out of.

None of mine used flashcards/mindmaps. Still 9s and few 8s/A* and few 8s.

What works for one might not works fo someone else. But wasting time making all these cards etc is in my opinion a waste of time, unless you do them well in advance

I'll let you know in August...

(Struggling to get DD to do any revision beyond seneca quizzes and working through the odd past paper with friends. Mocks next week...)

I found working with friends through past papers was really effective.
Each child helping the others with their strongest subjects and being helped with the ones they found hardest.